Revisiting the 2003 Iraq War

NPR Radio reports:

ANTOON: If you take the definitions of terrorism, it's about acquiring political objectives by violence against innocent civilians. And that's what happened in Iraq - because if we go back to the rationale, you know, the initial phase of the war was supposedly about weapons of mass destruction, right? But it's important for listeners to understand that in 2002, it was obvious, and it was confirmed that there were no weapons of mass destruction. So the war basically was waged based on a lie. And then when there were no weapons of mass destruction, there was a shift in the discourse saying, well, this is about democracy and about building a new country.

Using depleted uranium weapons back in 1991 in the first Gulf War and then using them again in 2003 - and the research is all out there for listeners to go and look into it - what depleted uranium does to the bodies of Iraqi infants and men and women and how children are born in Fallujah with birth defects because of the illegal weapons that were used there. And yet there is no accountability. There is no acknowledgement. And this, to my mind, amounts to terrorism.

No, and I get tired of hearing this nonsense.

Yes, it was obvious in 2002 that the USA had no strong evidence of operational WMD. There was some evidence, but it was weak, and sensible people did not believe.

But our leaders did not say we did. Instead, they said that Iraq had WMD programs, and there were chemical and nuclear materials that were not accounted for. And that was correct, as you can read on Wikipedia.

Depleted uranium does not cause birth defects.

There were neocons who foolishly believed in building a new country. I am all for blaming the perpetual warmongers who want the American empire to rule the world. They also brought us the Ukraine War and a lot of other wars. But it is blaming the wrong target to blame lying politicians or bad intelligence.